Chris Stapleton helps spark some seriously good vibes on a new collaboration with guitar legend, Carlos Santana. He and the rock icon team up for a co-written track called “Joy,” finding an inner light in a world of darkness.
Part of Santana’s upcoming Blessings and Miracles album (out Friday, October 15), track was written by Stapleton and Santana themselves, and finds the country star lending his soulful sandpaper vocal to the project. With lyrics about casting troubles aside and embracing joy itself, Stapleton delivers a soft-touch performance that matches the feel of Santana’s warm, intricate playing, as the icon seems to caress his guitar’s fretboard. The project is all the more interesting considering both artists have a signature sound all their own, brought together here for the greater good.
“I was very intrigued to work with Chris,” Santana says, according to reporting by Taste of Country. “We talked on the phone about the COVID situation and how there’s so much fear in the world, and I said, ‘We need to create music as a healing force. We must bring hope and courage and disinfect twisted minds infected with darkness.’ That gave him the ammunition to write such incredible words. … Somewhere I said ‘flying on the wings of angels,’ so it’s a collaboration, and what an incredible song it is.”
The unique track makes Stapleton the only country artist on Santana’s Blessings and Miracles album, but it’s not so out of the ordinary for Stapleton himself, who is frequently adventurous with his genre crossing.
Chris Stapleton got his start in Nashville as a member of the bluegrass group, The SteelDrivers, and has since teamed up with everyone from Justin Timberlake to Pink and Ed Sheeran with Bruno Mars. He’s also featured on a recent tribute album to hard rock icons, Metallica, delivering his own searing-hot version of “Nothing Else Matters” for The Metallica Blacklist.